Beyond the Pod: Empowering Economic Mobility Through Early Education

Season 4 of our hit podcast “No One Is Coming to Save Us” with Lemonada Media is finally out and so we’re excited for you to tune in! 

The first episode in Season 4, How Childcare Can Fight Poverty, explores how early education can break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Host and veteran reporter Gloria Riviera sits down with Emily Centeio, a director at the Epiphany Early Learning Center in Boston (one of our Neighborhood partners!), to discuss their programming, which provides resources to families experiencing poverty. Gloria also speaks with Dr. Jorge Luis Garcia, a professor at Clemson University, whose research shows the positive impact of quality early education on kids, families, and our economy.

The stories and research shared in this episode underscore the transformative opportunity we have to build child care ecosystems that wrap around children and families and help lift them out of poverty.

As we hear in this week’s episode, access to high-quality early education programs has been shown to reduce economic disparities and promote positive outcomes for children and families. Importantly, child care programs provide a unique opportunity to reach vulnerable families with young children in an effective and caring way. Child care programs are environments filled with trusted relationships between families and caregivers and they are where children – and their families – are deeply known. 

Despite this, in the U.S., our broken child care system has not done enough to ensure that early childhood education providers can offer not only excellence in education, but also the full-scope wraparound supports necessary to help children and families, and the educators they rely on, thrive. Helping child care providers build their capacity to serve as ecosystems of support is central to our mission at Neighborhood Villages. 

At Neighborhood Villages, we are deeply committed to fostering economic mobility through our wraparound supports for families; our innovative workforce programs; and our advocacy efforts. Our work is grounded in the belief that investment in early education improves the lives of children today and creates lasting change for generations to come. 

Wraparound Support for Families

Economic empowerment is about creating a supportive environment where whole families can thrive. In partnership with a network of independent early learning programs in Boston, we operate “The Neighborhood,” our innovation lab that is dedicated to transforming early education and care. In The Neighborhood, we test and evaluate interventions designed to be scaled in partnership with government. These programs include those that help ensure that families, providers, and educators have the resources and wraparound supports that they need to succeed.

A key component of our work is our Family Navigator program, which helps to transform child care programs into ecosystems of support for children and families impacted by poverty. Family Navigators are essential to connecting families with personalized support and guidance to help them access the full range of resources available to them. From supports to address food insecurity, to mental health, to housing, navigators are there to guide families every step of the way. This work is critical to showing how our child care system can be transformed to deliver not only high-quality early education and care, but also integrated health and social services that meet the full scope of needs of children and families at the outset, when it matters most. 

Innovative Workforce Programs

Economic mobility begins with opportunity. We are dedicated to providing those opportunities to children and families, as well as the early educators they rely on. 

In Massachusetts, there are more than 37,000 early educators who take care of more than 178,000 children aged 0-5 during a crucial time for their development. However, these educators don’t have enough chances for professional training, development, or career growth that would help them improve their skills and prospects for career advancement. This lack of career support affects the quality of education and care that children and families receive across the state. Additionally, many early educators - most of whom are women of Color - are struggling financially. More, even though women of Color make up a large part of the early education and child care workforce, they are rarely in leadership positions, which are mostly held by white women. This creates racial pay gaps in a profession where pay is already low. In Massachusetts, Black educators earn about $0.78 less per hour than their white colleagues.

At Neighborhood Villages, our workforce programs are designed to help early educators start their careers or advance within the field by removing barriers to accessing credentials and higher education opportunities and by creating a pathway to professional growth.

For those starting out on their journey, our career navigation team offers personalized guidance in selecting the right college or course, applying for financial aid, and navigating the application process. Every aspiring educator deserves the chance to pursue their academic goals, and we are here to support them.

Additionally, through our Registered Apprenticeship Program, we offer educators an accessible pathway to credentialing that combines on-the-job coaching and mentoring with skills training and incremental wage increases as competency builds. In partnership with the MA Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (EOLWD), our apprenticeship program includes two, stackable apprenticeship tracks: one supporting educators in achieving a CDA, a nationally recognized credential qualifying educators for Lead Teacher certification, and another offering current Lead Teachers and aspiring education leaders an opportunity to pursue a Director-level certification. What’s more, our Apprenticeship program is diversifying child care workforce leadership: more than 50% of participating Director-level apprentices identify as women of Color. 

Advocacy Efforts 

Since our founding in 2017, Neighborhood Villages has been working tirelessly with partners, advocates, and elected officials to enact desperately needed policy reform for Massachusetts’ early education and care sector. 

We saw a huge return on those efforts when Governor Maura Healey recently signed the Commonwealth’s Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget, which invests a historic $1.5 billion in early education and child care. 

The budget also codifies pivotal policy provisions to improve the economic mobility of families and educators, including raising income eligibility for state child care financial assistance and making the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) direct-to-provider operations grants program permanent. These changes will help increase financial accessibility for families seeking early education and care and increase wages for early childhood educators, creating a more equitable system for all.

In addition to these financial investments, the budget also establishes a career ladder for early educators, providing clear pathways for professional growth and salary increases. This is an important step in ensuring that early educators receive the recognition and compensation that they deserve, with a goal being that their salaries and benefits align more closely with those of K-12 educators.

Neighborhood Villages is working to create a future where every child has the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background. The stories shared in this episode of “No One Is Coming to Save Us” remind us of the profound impact that early education can have on individuals, their surrounding community, and society at large.